Supernova's in our galaxy.

[Guest]

Just watching Sunday's great episode of The Sky at Night. I remember observing a supernova in M81 or M82 galaxy a few years back. Just amazed that a single star can reveal itself in a whole galaxy.

But have there been any such events in our own Milky Way. I can only imagine that it would cause trouble if it were near by.

[Merlin66]

The 1987 SN in the large Magellanic Cloud was a close call............

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A

[John]

The last SN observed within our galaxy was in 1604, observed by Kepler I believe. We might be due another though ?

 

 

[Merlin66]

The list of known supernova for our galaxy is not very long:

1054 (Crab Nebula,-7(max) mag) 1572 (Tycho, -4 mag), and 1604 (Kepler, -2.2 mag)

Others have been suggested:

185, 396, 437, 827, 1006, 1181, 1203, 1230 ( Hsi Tze-tsung, "Catalogue of Ancient Nova")

Edited July 14, 2020 by Merlin66

[Davey-T]

Cassiopeia A SNR

Dave

[Corncrake]

32 minutes ago, John said:

We might be due another though ?

Yes ! Patrick (even before he was a Sir), and the books when I was young, were saying "overdue" but that is the trouble with statistics of the few

The average of one big one per century per galaxy like ours can be weazled away by intervening obscuration.

[Merlin66]

Yeah, that was a "suspect" from 1667..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supernova_remnants

[Les Ewan]

I'll never forget the evening I went  out in August 1975  and saw Cygnus with two Denebs! No internet  those days so no warning  and it was a shock to see.Although this was 'just' a nova with a magnitude of 1.8 it was still impressive.